INFUTURE Final conference Tue 30.11. – Wed 1.12.2021

The INFUTURE project seeks comprehensive solutions to support sustainable and cost-effective inland waterway transportation. The INFUTURE project has been implemented in cooperation with Finnish and Russian experts in the field. The work has been funded by the South-East Finland – Russia ENI CBC 2014-2020 program.

INFUTURE FINAL CONFERENCE
Waterways – a step towards a green transition

Tue 30.11. – Wed 1.12.2021

The conference will focus on presenting the research results of the project through four different themes. The first theme, “Towards a Green Transition”, focuses on the EU’s Green Deal and Fit for 55 programs, as well as national emission reduction targets for inland waterway transportation. Another theme highlights the opportunities and potential of inland waterway transport today. The third theme aims to present best practices and smart solutions for the development of inland waterway infrastructure and port operations. The last, fourth session looks at visions for the future of inland waterways as a sustainable mode of freight transport.

In addition to the researchers of the INFUTURE project, the conference speakers will be high-level experts such as

  • Marta Wolska, EU Commission, Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport
  • Benjamin Boyer and Laure Roux, Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine
  • Eero Hokkanen, Ministry of Transport and Communications
  • Tomi Solakivi, University of Turku
  • Claudia Beumer, VT Group
  • Jarkko Toivola, Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency
  • Ville Hinkka, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd
  • Olga Ansberg, Director of Port Logistics, Port of Vyborg
  • Kevin Desmond, Inland Waterway International, Alternative Fuels Committee

The INFUTURE Final Conference will be held in Kotka, Maritime Centre Vellamo. You can attend the conference or parts of it both on site and on-line.

Program here

Sign up here

The conference is free of charge.

Doctoral dissertation on the use of AIS-data for vessel collision risk analysis

Mr. Lei Du defended his doctoral dissertation on 1 October 2021 at Aalto University, in the field of marine technology. The opponent was Associate Professor Rafał Szłapczyński from the Gdansk University of Technology, Poland. Assistant professor Osiris Valdez Banda – a member of the Kotka Maritime Research Centre’s management group – was the supervisor of the doctoral thesis.

The thesis, titled as Maritime Traffic Risk Analysis in the Northern Baltic Sea from AIS data, consists of five scientific articles and a summary section. It reviews and develops framework and methodology of maritime traffic risk analysis to support decision-making for the prevention of and response to accidents, particularly ship collisions.

The focus of the thesis is in advancing the latest methodology of utilizing non-accident critical events, in other words near misses, detected from AIS data, as the basis to risk assessments. AIS refers to Automatic Identification Systems tracking the ship movements, being commonly used by vessel traffic service (VTS) centres worldwide.

”Through this work, we can identify the waters where dangerous encounters happened frequently and provide evidence for the identified causes of serious ship encounters,” Mr. Du says.

He continues by telling the results can help developing preventive measures to reduce the ship collision probability, or to minimize the negative consequences of ship collisions by allocating more reponse resources to the most risky areas. The expected end-users of the results include the authorities responsible for maritime traffic planning and management, as well as pollution prevention and response agencies.

The thesis summary can be downloaded from the Aaltodoc publication archive.

 

Written by: Annukka Lehikoinen

A recent scientific article explores biofouling management in shipping

Researchers in the COMPLETE project have published an article that explores the management question related to the biofouling of ships’ underwater structures through qualitative decision analysis. The article recently came out in Marine Pollution Bulletin.

Biofouling management is important to prevent the spread of harmful non-indigenous species, but also from the viewpoint of the fuel economy and CO2 emissions of ships. The attachment and growth of organisms can be prevented by regular cleaning of the underwater parts of vessels and by applying various antifouling or foul-release coatings. However, there are risks associated with the methods and their combinations, that should be considered when making choices.

In their recent article, the researchers clarify the multifaceted and cross-disciplinary nature of the biofouling management decisions. To support readers’ thinking, the problem is visualized as a causal conceptual map (qualitative influence diagram). The article explains how ship- and route-specific factors, as well as the physico-chemical conditions in the Baltic Sea, affect the case-specifically optimal choices. The control options are viewed in a multi-objective manner, from the perspectives of shipping companies’ fuel and biofouling management costs, CO2 emissions and the risks to the Baltic Sea ecosystem.

The article is part of KMRC-researcher Emilia Luoma’s PhD study in the research group of the University of Helsinki. In her thesis, Luoma applies participatory system modeling methods to examine environmental and sustainability issues related to marine traffic in the Baltic Sea.

Read the original article

 

Written by: Annukka Lehikoinen

Assessing and managing the risks of oil accidents – Doctoral dissertation

Liangliang Lu, a member of the Kotka Maritime Research Centre’s research community, defended his doctoral dissertation on 18 June 2021 at Aalto University in the field of marine technology. The opponent was Professor Zaili Yang from Liverpool John Moores University.

During his thesis work, Lu has developed methods for assessing and managing the risks of oil accidents in challenging icy conditions, the case study area being the northern Baltic Sea.

As the annual ice-covered period shortens, new shipping lanes will open-up in the Arctic and subarctic seas. When shipping in these challenging conditions increases, the likelihood of accidents increases. The low-biodiversity northern ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to various disturbances and the oil spill could have more devastating consequences in these areas than average. Oil spill response in icy conditions is also highly challenging and its success uncertain.

Lianliang Lu’s thesis focuses specifically on improving the effectiveness of oil spill response in ice conditions. It starts by developing a holistic system model that describes a chain of events from a ship collision to the amount of oil leaking from a tanker, oil drifting in the ocean, and eventually oil spill response in ice conditions.

“In order to propose effective risk management measures, we must first understand the risk-generating system,” says Lu.

“Systems modeling helps to identify the most critical factors affecting the effectiveness of oil spill response. On this basis, it is possible to start planning optimal risk management measures – that is, measures to improve oil spill response,” he states.

The thesis then identifies the operability of an oil spill response vessel in ice as one of the most critical factors influencing the success of oil spill response. On this basis, Lu has developed a new type of operability index based on transit modelling in dynamic ice, to be used as a tool during oil spill response operations. The index is calculated for each response vessel and is intended to assist in the planning and execution of a spill response operation under the environmental and ice conditions prevailing at the time of the accident.

Lianliang Lu’s thesis have been partly conducted as part of the SIMREC -project.

The thesis consists of five scientific articles and a summary titled as ”Risk management of ship-source oil spill in ice conditions in the Northern Baltic Sea”. The summary can be downloaded from the Aaltodoc publication archive.

 

Written by: Annukka Lehikoinen

Annual Report 2020 published

Year 2020 has been very different. For us as a research centre, the ongoing pandemic has not been catastrophic, but it has changed the ways of cooperation. In the Annual Report of Kotka Maritime Research Centre you can check the facts and figures from the year 2020.

COMPLETE project will be followed by an extension stage project COMPLETE PLUS

COMPLETE project will be followed by an extension stage project COMPLETE PLUS “Practical implementation of the COMPLETE project outputs and tools”, receiving co-financing from the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme. The project will start in April 2021 and end in December 2021, and it will be implemented by 11 COMPLETE project partners. The project aims to ensure that COMPLETE project outputs will be operationalized to ensure their sustainable use by all relevant actors and stakeholders. Further information about the COMPLETE PLUS will be shared at the COMPLETE web page in due time (www.balticcomplete.com).

COMPLETE Final Conference materials available

 

9-10 February 2021

The Final Conference of the COMPLETE project “Completing management options in the Baltic Sea Region to reduce the risk of invasive species introduction by shipping” was held on 9-10 February 2021 as an online conference. Over 160 participants from 18 countries attended this event, representing policy makers, authorities, shipping companies, ports/port authorities, boating associations, companies providing hull cleaning services and antifouling systems, scientists and non-governmental organizations, among others. The first day was dedicated to the work that has been carried out in the COMPLETE project to support the harmonized implementation of the IMO Ballast Water Management Convention in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). On the second day, the presentations focused on the biofouling management issues in the BSR, and showcased the results on harmonized monitoring of non-indigenous species in the region.

The recorded conference presentations can be viewed, and the presentations as PDFs can be downloaded at the conference web page: https://balticcomplete.com/news/final-conference.

Reports of research assessment are now published

Kotka Maritime Research Centre invited two external reviewers to assess the work of the centre and to provide recommendations for the further development. The reports provides the assessment of two external reviewers during the period from 2015 to 2018 and to provide.  The assessment was to assess the quality and potential of the research, the success of multi- and interdisciplinary collaboration within KMRC as well as KMRC’s research impact, societal impact and innovative capacity. The external reviewers are Dr. Jens-Uwe Schröder-Hinrichs, Vice-President (Academic Affairs) and Professor from World Maritime University and FT, Adjunct Professor Anita Mäkinen from Finnish Transport and Communications Agency.

Please read the assessment reports here.

KMRC Publications 1 External review Anita Mäkinen

KMRC Publications 2 External review Jens-Uwe Schröder-Hinrichs